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He grins. “Whose side areyouon?”
We both drink then, and listen to the night sounds in the backyard, dominated by the tree owl who’s been annoying Rip lately. In the distance, as always, I can hear the ocean, always there for me.
And suddenly I don’t feel happy. I feel overwhelmingly sad. Not at the prospect of losing this trial.
At the prospect of losing this man, up and dying just when I’m getting to know this man and he’s getting to know me.
“What a day,” I say, and rub my eyes, as if trying to rub fatigue out of them. But it has nothing to do with fatigue. I just don’t want him to see the tears forming. “What a damn day.”
And maybe in the moment Ben Kalinsky senses a change in the night air between us. He puts down his glass now and gets up and covers the short distance between us, and leans down, and kisses me.
When the kiss finally ends, what feels like an hour or so later, I say, “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Doc. Some of which might make you want to run in the other direction.”
“Impossible.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
Tell him.
Tell him right now and get it over with.
Better or worse.
“You look as if you’ve got something on your mind,” he says.
My answer to that is to smile, and stand, and put my arms around him, and then we’re kissing again, with even more follow-through than before.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I say.
“And what is that?”
I take a deep breath. “Kind of a matter of life or death.”
“I can handle it,” he says. “I’m a doctor.”
“I love you,” I say.
One Hundred Five
I AM BACK ONthe courthouse steps the next morning, doing my morning scrum with the media, one of only a few I have left.
Win or lose.
“So what can we expect today, Jane?” MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff asks. “Long summation or a short one?”
“With Kevin Ahearn? Pack a lunch.”
“I meant yours.”
“Bet the under. You all saw what happened yesterday, despite all the trickeration from opposing counsel. My client did most of the heavy lifting for me. You all saw, and you heard, everything the jury did. Did he sound like a guilty person to you?”
“Oh, hell yes,”I hear from behind Soboroff, and then Otis Miller, whom I’ve not seen in court since he testified, is stepping to the front of the crowd. The witness who saw Rob Jacobson’s car leaving the Gateses’ house on the night in question.
The witness I’d managed to out as a gay man, as I’d tried, in vain, to float the he-could-have-done-it defense.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Miller,” I say, trying not to act rattled. “Are you properly credentialed?”
